Session 4 - 2026-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Player Characters

Recap

All the employees of the Sips were gathered together one night at the Celestial Sips to discuss some business and work. This little business and family had been working for almost a year and next month would mark that milestone. Barnabas and Jimmie wanted to celebrate. They needed a few things to fall into place to make that happen, and were going to rely on, and pay the crew, to help with that. The planning might have started sooner, but the business with the theft a couple weeks back shook things up a bit.

The owners would pay the crew 2 bags of coin apiece if they could take care of the needs list. The party would need a ton of Dust to process into Moonshine, at least 20 bottles, and they’d pay extra for more. The crew could make up their mind on how they want to acquire it. The party also needed some extra muscle unless the crew wanted to run it themselves, and at least one other band so the house band could also enjoy the festivities. There was also the matter of spreading the word, which had to both be subtle, but wide, drawing in potential new customers and letting old ones know. Word of mouth might serve, but probably not well enough. Finally, there was food, drink and other supplies, a simple meeting with the supplier, Randal and a final payment would close that out.

The crew was given a stipend of money to make it all work and they had 4 weeks to get it all done. They agreed they’d need to divide and conquer a bit and Rhys and Pete both decided to approach the food and drink supplier first, while Paul planned to track down a band, and Velvet would work on security. Purrcival and Gus remained on standby as possible aid for anyone who needed.

Unfortunately, Rhys and Pete would learn from Randal that the truck with the last of their supplies had gone missing about 2 days ago after a check in by radio only half a day outside the city. They realized they’d need a bit of help and rounded up Velvet and Gus to go searching for the missing truck and its driver and shotgun, who Randal would pay for their safe return. The group took the Sips truck and headed out to the last known location, eventually discovering an area where tire tracks led through an open field towards a village. Opting for a more stealthy approach they took the roads around towards the village and found the truck still running outside the abandoned town’s gas station with signs of a struggle and no sign of Randal’s employees.

Velvet was able to use her mystical instincts disguised as investigation to see that the workers had been attacked by skeletal figures in a mist that was currently nowhere to be seen, but they had fled toward the nearby village church. The two were alive and inside, but took some convincing to come out, which allowed time for the mist to gather. As it creeped in the crew decided a swift retreat made the most sense, defending the pair and working to transfer the cargo from the broken truck to their own while under assault by the skeletal beings. Ultimately, everyone made it out alive after taking out a few of the skeletal foes. They would later return for the truck, but knowing how this strange foe worked allowed them to do so quickly and easily. Food and drink were secure at no additional cost AND the crew was paid some coin from Randal for bringing back his workers alive.

Meanwhile Paul started his search by talking to Pearl and learning about a few up and comers who might fit the bill of willing and fairly cheap. He then hit the library and periodicals along with Purrcival to dig into information about the bands, learning the unfortunate news that the most promising of the set had been killed in a gang related gun fight. But the other two stood out. Jenny and Zig Zags was a group that was on the cusp of making it big and the other, The Downtown Crew was still local, but popular enough locally. Paul decided to pursue Jenny and arranged a meeting with their manager. In that meeting the back and forth of deal making led to a proposition, the fee would be cut in half if Paul could fetch a collab and a few performances with Pearl, the Moonflowers’s talented horn player.

Paul made no promises, and was glad he didn’t when speaking with Pearl. Turns out Pearl wasn’t fond of Jenny and how she ran her band. Paul chose not to push the issue too hard and that gave Pearl the room to refuse. That fact in tow, Paul returned to Jenny and the Zig Zags manager to seal the deal for the more expensive fee, taking 1/3rd of the crew’s stipend for the event.

That brought a close to the first week of preparations and the crew caught their breath before moving on to the next tasks.

Velvet, after being distracted the previous week by helping with the lost truckers, resumed her efforts to track down security and decided to call her military contact, Naomi, who had already been looking for a connection to the Celestial Sips to supply clean Moonshine to the vets she was helping. She laid out the need to Naomi who offered to look through her files and call around to find some likely candidates, along with likely working a shift herself. She was able to track down 4 possible candidates. Three of them sounded like decent fits, while one was cut from the list as he was a combat mage who had fallen off the wagon a few times. The group that remained wanted a mix of coin and Shine, and so final answers would depend on how much Shine the crew could scrounge up.

Meanwhile, Rhys and Pete decided to divide and conquer on gathering info on possible sources of Dust. Pete explored through his connections to possibly purchase some, unfortunately, he’d be forced to buy from multiple sources if he wanted to source all of it through his method and that would cost a bit more than getting it in bulk from one source. Rhys was able to catch rumors of a small pack of large lizard Lunatics which had assaulted a band of hunters out in the crags, he liked this as it was two birds with one stone, both the Dust for the Sips and the hides for Rodriguez. They rounded up everyone but Gus, leaving him in town to work on the advertisement angle and headed out to hunt down the lizards.

When they finally tracked them down they found that, unfortunately in one way, fortunately in another, that one of the group of lizards was far bigger than they had expected. Rhys used a servant conjured from magic to stir up the lizards, and they burst from their den with aggression, attacking the nearest threats until Rhys brought attention to himself by using magic. Luckily, Velvet was able to keep one distracted for the entire fight, while Paul and Pete helped Rhys a bit, though Pete eventually decided to investigate calls coming from the cave and found a wounded man there who was one of the missing hunters. Beaten and battered, but ultimately victorious the group skinned and harvested their kills with a practiced ease, earning enough Dust to cover the 20 expected bottles and pay the security crew in their desired form.

They returned to the city to rest and check in with how Gus was doing.